vibrantBrains: San Francisco Brain Gym

vibrantBrains, a gym to exercise our brains, has recently opened in San Francisco. We all buy into the health club idea for our bodies so why not one to tone our brains, too? The vibrantBrains folks have created a pleasant, bright space on Sacramento Street, close to cafes, shops, and residential areas. They have the front of the club filled with interesting books, including some bestsellers, by scientists and others on various aspects of brain research and how the brain works; the middle part of the club is filled with state-of-the-art computers with headphones nearby. A lounge area with comfy chairs and tea, coffee, and water always available fills the floor-to-ceiling windowed alcove at the back of the club and is a great place to chat with other members. They have developed Neurobics Circuit Training, which incorporates a number of scientifically based software programs that enable a club member to work on different skills for each visit or a variety of skills within a workout and at a huge discount over trying to find and purchase these programs individually. These games and exercises, based on hard science, emphasize different skills, such as memory, reasoning, visual scanning, word recall, and quantitative facility, or a combination of many of these skills at once. They also focus on increasing speed and accuracy, with practice.

Just as we need to lift weights to insure that are our muscles are strong enough to swim or dance, we also need to strengthen our speed and accuracy with memory, reasoning, and visual scanning skills to make sudoku or a crossword puzzle fun. Or to make a challenging book enjoyable to read.

For those who want to add more intensity (and hard science), vibrantBrains also makes other programs available at a discount to its members, including Dr. Gary Small's (from the UCLA Center for Aging) Memory Fitness Course and Posit Science's Brain Fitness Program.

The vibrantBrains innovative founders, Jan Zivic and Lisa Schoonerman, may just have latched onto a trend that Boomers and others must incorporate into our lives to keep that notion that "60 is the new 40" alive and well. And just to enjoy our lives more. They will also offer a speaker series soon as well as book clubs and other related activies.

I, along with most people I know, have figured out that I need a variety of exercises for my body, from aerobic ones like swimming and dancing, to weight training to flexibility training, such as yoga and Pilates, just to maintain. It's high time we added in specific exercises to tone the various everyday brain skills we need to maintain and even increase the quality of our lives. Better memory, reasoning, language, quantitative, and visual-spatial skills have to make living just more interesting and more fun.

Mental Workouts Delay Alzheimer's in Mice

More evidence builds that mental activity can "dramaticlly delay the progress of Alzheimers' disease."

According to Reuters' Will Dunham, "Researchers at the University of California-Irvine studied hundreds of mice altered to make them develop the plaques and tangles in brain tissue that are considered hallmarks of Alzheimer's Disease in people." The mice received "brain training," which in this case was figuring out a maze in water and which was made available four times a day for a week at intervels between two and 18 months of age. The mice that were exposed to this learning had significantly slower build-up of the beta amyloid protein, which has been shown to be the culprit in the "gooey clumping" outside nerve cells. These mice also experienced less build-up of the protein that causes "twisted fibers" in brain cells.

The research results have just been published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Kim Green, one of the researchers, noted that research is planned which looks at the effects of more frequent and intensive learning experiences and whether they might lead to longer effects.

A Little Spice in Our Lives: Good Brain Food

In my Peace Corps days as a volunteer teacher in North Africa, I vividly remember buying spices from large burlap spice bags at the Thursday morning open-air market on the main street of my little town, Grombalia, Tunisia. The women selling the spices had colorful orange and brown scarves wrapped around their heads with long, silver earrings dangling from their ears in the Berber style . They were friendly and I often bought spices, taking their advice on how to use them in cooking. That's where I learned to love turmeric, also called curcumin. It's a bright yellow spice which colors everything in its path yellow (including your hands if you're not careful) and is a key ingredient in curry, which accounts for the yellow color of most curries. I like curries of all kinds, mild to spicy, but I learned from the Berber women that turmeric is also great on baked or roasted fish.

Lately, several studies have looked at the effects of turmeric on the prevention of Alzheimer's. Previous research efforts have noted that the rate of Alzheimer's in people over 65 in the US is four times that of the same demographic in India. In fact, in some towns in India, less than one percent of the population over 65 have Alzheimer's. Naturally, diet is one place to look for the differences. And yes, turmeric is a grand antioxidant, which appears to significantly help prevent the plaques and tangles and related inflammation of Alzheimer's in the brain.

This finding, the latest in a series of similar findings over the last few months, came from research at the University of California, Los Angeles, led by Dr. Sally Frautschy.

The Need for Friends Is Hardwired in Our Brains

Daniel Goleman's NY Times article yesterday summarized why many neuroscientists believe that the need for human social interaction is so important to us, physically and mentally. We already know that folks with strong social networks of friends and family get well faster after injury or disease and live longer. But why?

Mirror neurons may be a big part of the answer. Our brains are hardwired to "mirror" what other people do or to rapidly synchronize with the feelings of others. This explains empathy and rapport, for example. Or as two researchers, Lisa M. Diamond and Lisa Aspinwall from the University of Utah, put it (in Daniel Goleman's much more accessible words): "emotional closeness allows the biology of one person to influence the other." And John T. Cacioppo from the University of Chicago, says that "the emotional status of our main relationships has a significant impact on our overall pattern of cardiovascular and neuroendocrine activity." We know, for example, that a supportive remark or touch from a friend can actually lower our blood pressure, reduce stress, and certainly make us feel better.

There we go, again: the amazing connection between heart and head. We are in for some exciting research and findings ahead.

On another but related topic, I've just found a new blog (for me), Developing Intelligence. Chris Chatham's last few postings have been on language acquisition and the intersection between language, culture, perception, and meaning. Mirror neurons should definitely be a topic in this discussion.

Language is a crazy salad of categorizing sounds and meaning and perceptions, organizing our thoughts (more categories, which result in, for example, grammar and syntax), and then comprehending others and expressing ourselves. I think it will become clear through more research in areas like "mirror neurons" that language and thinking are closely connected to our need for and response to social interactions. That's where we get the idea about language in the first place. And that's why language is so intertwined with culture, perception, and meaning, occurring through social interactions. Incredibly complex and alarmingly simple, at the same time. Like all really workable systems.

The message: one important part of brain fitness has got to be strong social interactions with friends and family. Our biology is just waiting to be influenced by others and those mirror neurons need to be exercised just like everything else.